There are good reasons why society should (to some degree) prohibit private enterprise from profiting from solar climate engineering. Granted, as a general rule, private actors are more efficient that the state. Thus, even when the overall endeavor in question is the provision of a non-excludable good or service (which typically are and should be provided by the state), such as defense or police protection or flood protection, then private contractors are often involved in the actual delivery of certain goods or services essential to that overall endeavor (military equipment or police cars or levee construction). However, when the costs of decisions which unduly favor particular private actors at the expense of the public interest are widely spread (via higher taxes and poorer services) and the benefits are tightly concentrated (via lucrative contracts), then public decision makers are susceptible to capture by private actors. For example, in Andrew’s other email, he pointed toward private prisons, which in the US have influenced policy making in order to increase incarceration.
Solar climate engineering would be such a non-excludable service. Here, the stakes for the public’s welfare are very high (on the order of trillions of dollars) whereas those of the potential private contractors (e.g. the hypothetical Stratospheric Injection services Inc) are much lower (still, on the order of tens of billions) but still quite significant. One could argue that the former are great enough that democratic mechanisms, despite their flaws, would prevent this sort of regulatory capture. However, the potential inefficiencies from a state-operated or managed enterprise are much lower than the potential social welfare losses which would result from either (1) undue influence and capture by the private contractors, or (2) the widespread perception of such influence and capture preventing the research, development, and implementation of solar climate engineering, assuming this path would be warranted. This is why private patents in SRM be prohibited. Of course, at some level private industry will benefit. If the state operates the machinery, then it must by the machines. If the states builds the machines, it must buy the materials. Etc. -Jesse ----------------------------------------- Jesse L. Reynolds, PhD Postdoctoral researcher Research funding coordinator, sustainability and climate European and International Public Law Tilburg Sustainability Center Tilburg University, The Netherlands Book review editor, Law, Innovation, and Technology email: j.l.reyno...@uvt.nl<mailto:j.l.reyno...@uvt.nl> http://works.bepress.com/jessreyn/ From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: 17 February 2015 22:38 To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Geoengineering is no place for corporate profit making. Hamilton. Guardian. Poster's note : I rarely find myself in agreement with Clive, and this piece is no exception. I don't see why there can't be a market in SRM services, just like there's a market for train operators or fighter jets. In fact, it's hard for me to see why the state would be a natural choice to operate geoengineering machinery at all. The fuel and mining firms cautioned against here would seem a natural set of partners for CDR - with the right scale, expertise, and financial clout to get the job done reliably and safely. Geoengineering is no place for corporate profit making http://gu.com/p/45pq8 Clive Hamilton Published: 14:36 GMT Tue 17 February 2015 If you want to make money out of global warming invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy companies, says Clive Hamilton Geoengineering: it could be a money-making opportunity for business “Save the world and make a little cash on the side.” That’s the motto of Russ George, the colourful entrepreneur behind Planktos Science who wants to put geoengineering into practice now. George is convinced that by adding iron sulphate to the oceans, he can stimulate plankton blooms and so suck enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset human emissions from burning coal and oil. In 2007, backed by a Canadian real estate developer, the Planktos ship set sail from San Francisco bound for the Galapagos Islands and loaded up with iron sulphate. George was going to make a killing by selling carbon offsets to whoever wanted them. George believed, and told whoever asked, that ocean fertilization could become a $100bn business and hinted to journalist Jeff Goodell that America’s biggest coal-burning utility was interested in buying his carbon credits. US businessman defends controversial geoengineering experiment The venture soon collapsed, leaving a cloud of mistrust hanging over all research into iron fertilisation. Not long after Russ George set the regulatory alarm bells ringing, the London Convention, which regulates ocean dumping, and the Convention on Biological Diversity both passed resolutions banning iron fertilisation experiments except under restrictive conditions. Rogue geoengineers like Russ George drive respectable researchers crazy, not to mention those business people who think there really are profits to be had from a plan B. On this question, last week’s report by the US National Research Council (NRC) stresses that carbon dioxide removal is expensive and limited by “technical immaturity”. A range of companies have identified business opportunities in technologies designed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it somewhere more or less permanently. Those who believe they can profit from carbon credits because polluters with emission caps will pay for them point to the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, which allows parties to meet their emission reduction obligations by paying developing countries to grow forests onto land cleared long ago. More trees means more carbon dioxide soaked up in vegetation rather than in the air, at least for a time. However, worried about the verifiability and permanency of carbon dioxide stored in trees, the European Union does not allow credits generated that way to be traded in its emissions trading scheme. Geoengineering: it could be a money-making opportunity for business And the commercial promise of other methods of carbon dioxide removal is likely to be very limited. Credits for using giant machines to remove the gas are not likely to be accepted internationally for a long time, if at all, not least because the industrial infrastructure needed for extraction would need to be about as big as the infrastructure that puts it there – oil wells, coal mines, railways, pipelines, power plants, refineries and so on. Neverthless “air capture” technologies are being developed by firms like Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company founded by Harvard physicist and geoengineering enthusiast David Keith. They are ventures looking for a rationale, but that has not stopped Alberta oil sands billionaire N Murray Edwards and Bill Gates from investing in the company. The prospects are awful when fossil fuel companies play both sides of the fence – oil companies such as Shell and ConocoPhillips have also put money into geoengineering. Is it ethical for the polluters to promote technologies that may allow them to continue to pollute? If the promises made by geoengineering erode the political incentives requiring polluters to cut their emissions, will we see fossil fuel corporations begin lobbying to get political endorsement for climate modification? The ethical and political difficulties deepen when we get to the other kind of geoengineering scheme reviewed in the NRC report, “albedo modification” – formerly known as solar radiation management – schemes to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface. No one will ever make money out of trading emission reduction credits in global dimming. But some commercial outfits can envisage a desperate world paying them princely sums for access to the technology for doing it. There have been a flurry of patents being issued, 28 at the last count, including one for a hose suspended by blimps in the sky that would spray sulphate aerosols. Branded the StratoShield it’s owned by a firm named Intellectual Ventures, which markets the device as “a practical, low-cost way to reverse catastrophic warming of the Arctic – or the entire planet.” Among the investors in Intellectual Ventures who perhaps see themselves making a motza from planetary catastrophe are Nathan Myhrvold, formerly chief technology officer at Microsoft, and Bill Gates himself. If the future of the world comes to depend on the Stratoshield, will they play hardball? So here’s the bottom line: if you want to make money out of global warming invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy companies. They are guaranteed winners and your children will not hate you for it.. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. 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